Keep watch, dear Lord,

with those who wake or watch

or weep this night,

and give your angels charge

over those who sleep.

Tend your sick ones,

O Lord Jesus Christ;

rest your weary ones;

bless your dying ones;

soothe your suffering ones;

pity your afflicted ones;

shield your joyous ones.

And all for your love’s sake.

Widely attributed to St Augustine (354-430), today’s prayer is used at Compline (Night Prayer). So as we begin to think about a comfortable bed and sleep’s sweet oblivion, we entrust to God all those for whom the night will be testing in many ways. That memorable trio of words beginning with ‘w’, however, (‘those who watch and wait and weep’) takes us swiftly and surely to the bedsides of the dying.

On this National Day of Reflection, organised by the end-of-life charity Marie Curie, we stand in solidarity with the millions grieving the loss of loved ones during the pandemic. When it was raging most savagely, Augustine’s prayer had a very particular resonance, a resonance explored by Ally Barrett in a hymn she wrote for Passiontide 2020. Covid statistics then were chilling. Churches were shut. The woman in this photo, comforted by a nurse as she weeps beside her dying husband, epitomises the darkness of that time.

Listen below to Ally herself singing her hymn and notice the ways her words draw on Augustine’s prayer - especially in verse two. There are those ‘w’ words again, but she also plays with Augustine’s pleas for support from angels. It’s already arrived, she says, in those medics under their PPE. God is present in these ‘angels disguised’ - watching, tending, resting, blessing, soothing, loving.