CHURCH OF IRELAND NOTES
For Saturday 23rd December 2000
From: The RCB
Library
Email: RCB Library
Almost Christmas
Tomorrow (Sunday), shortly after 3.15 pm in St Patrick's
Cathedral, Dublin, the congregation will stand and, after a pause, the
silence will be broken by the treble voice of a boy chorister singing
the first verse of Once in Royal David City. For many, both those
in the cathedral and those who listen year by year on radio, the
Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in St Patrick's brings to an end the
season of carol services and announces the beginning of Christmas.
The broadcast is one of the longest running programmes on RTE radio
and the popularity of the service is one of the more remarkable
contributions of the Church of Ireland to the life of the nation. And yet there is nothing distinctively Irish about the Festival of Nine
Lessons and Carols apart perhaps from the opening, for the words of Once
in Royal David City were written by Mrs C.F. Alexander, the wife of
the William Alexander, Bishop of Derry and subsequently Archbishop of
Armagh. The service was the creation of E.W. Benson, Bishop of Truro, in
1880, and was adapted to its present form in 1918 by King's College,
Cambridge, whose choir has turned the service into an international
event.
But St Patrick's, also, has played a part in broadening the appeal of
the service for as early as the 1940s the service sheet carried the
injunction, "PLEASE do not take this away until Christmas Eve, then
post it to your friends overseas". If the service could not be
heard in America, Australia, South Africa or where ever Irish men and
women found themselves at Christmastide, the words could be read, the
familiar tunes quietly hummed, and fond memories of cold and crisp
December evenings in Dublin could be recalled.
Today (Saturday) the choir of St Ann's Church, Dublin, will
sing carols in Dawson Street while in Rathfarham there will be carol
concerts in the grounds of the parish church.
On Christmas Day the bishops, led by the Archbishop of Armagh and the
Archbishop of Dublin, will, by tradition, preach and celebrate the
Eucharist in their diocesan cathedrals. In St Patrick's Cathedral,
Dublin, Christmas is one of the occasions when the dean preaches and the
Very Revd Dr Robert MacCarthy will do so at the Festival Eucharist. At
Evensong the choir of St Patrick's will sing the Christmas music from
Handel's Messiah. RTE will broadcast a Sung Eucharist from St
Bartholomew's Church, Dublin, where the vicar is the Revd William
Ritchie, while on RTE television there will be a Christmas Service with
carols from Sligo Grammar School led by the Revd John Merrick.
For many in the Church the Christmas break provides a welcome
opportunity to catch up on reading. A new book entitled Is it True, by
the Bishop of Meath and Kildare, Dr Richard Clarke, has just been
published by Dominican Publications and the APCK volume of millennium
essays, A Time to Build, edited by the Dean of Raphoe, Stephen
White, offers stimulating reading. Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. A
History, edited by Kenneth Milne, ought to appeal to all who are
interested in the history of the Church while aspects of the more recent
past are evoked in a collection of sermons by the former Dean of St
Patrick's, Maurice Stewart. As always there is a new edition of the Church
of Ireland Directory, once again case bound and with a striking
royal blue dust jacket. It is available from the RE Resource Centre Holy
Trinity Church, Church Avenue, Rathmines, Dublin 6 at £8.50 plus £1.80
postage.
Church of Ireland Notes appear in the Irish
Times whose web site may be found at http://www.ireland.com/ |
