Irish Times Notes13 Mar 21

Church of Ireland Notes from ‘The Irish Times’

St Patrick’s Day

Next Wednesday is St Patrick’s Day but in the light of the current restrictions of movement and assembly the celebrations will, of necessity, be more low key than usual with much of the religious dimension being on–line.

In St Patrick’s cathedral, Dublin, at 9.15am the Eucharist will be said in Irish by Canon David Oxley and at 11.15am the Patronal Eucharist, sung by the Cathedral Choir, will be celebrated when the Dean, Dr William Morton, will preside. Choral Evensong will be sung by the Cathedral Choir at 5.30pm when the St Patrick’s anthem will be Blessed City, heavenly Sale. The cathedral’s on–line services are available here.

In addition there will be a Service of Choral Evensong for St Patrick’s Day on RTÉ Radio 1 Extra / LW252 at 7pm. The Dean of St Patrick’s will lead the service with music, which has all been recorded due to Covid restrictions, performed by the Cathedral Choir, directed by Stuart Nicholson. 

Cumann Gaelach na hEaglaise will be promoting services in Irish and full details of them will be available nearer the time at www.gaeleaglais.com.  The Cathaoirleach of the Cumann, the Rev Trevor Sargent, will lead a service in Irish with English subtitles, available on YouTube.

The Annual Diocesan Service in the Diocese of Cork, Cloyne & Ross for St Patrick’s Day will be live streamed from St Mary’s church, Carrigaline, at 10.30am at carrigalineunion.org with a recording  on You Tube from 2.00pm. This year, the service will be bilingual  together with an additional reading from the Welsh–speaking Rector of  the Mallow Union of Parishes, the Revd Meurig Williams. Copies of the order of service  may  be obtained from tmurph@tmahr.com

Connor McCabe will read Urnaí na Nóna from Trinity College Chapel at 6.00. This will be in the form of a Zoom meeting so it will be necessary to pre–register at http://bit.ly/36loMUj.  Connor, a PhD student, began weekly Evening Prayer as Gaeilge on Wednesdays at 6pm in early February. This has been well received, with members of Trinity Choir signing at the service on occasion.

Tom Maxwell and The Lockdown Collaboration Choir have provided a recording of St Patrick’s Breastplate that may be used in St Patrick’s Day services or listened to privately.  Tom plays the organ on this recording with many Christmas Collaboration choir members returning to provide the vocals.  The recording may be found here. There is also a video of the earlier, Jozé, setting on the Zion Parish Rathgar website.

The Archbishop of Armagh has appointed the Revd Suzanne Cousins, Rector of the Benburb group of parishes, as his Inter Faith Advisor. Mrs Cousins has invaluable experience of living as a Christian overseas and engaging with Muslim people and communities. She is a member of the Inter Faith Working Group of the General Synod Commission for Christian Unity and Dialogue, and her MTh dissertation dealt with a central Anglican approach to inter–faith encounter, outlined in the Anglican Communion document. It was published in 2017 by Church of Ireland Publishing’s Braemor Studies series as

Generous Love in Multi–Faith Ireland.

Tomorrow (Sunday), the RTÉ Service for Mothering Sunday will feature the Dublin & Glendalough Mothers’ Union whose Chair is Karen Nelson. The Service will be coordinated by Avril Gillatt and led by the Revd Leonard Ruddock with Valerie Twomey on the piano.

The Service will be broadcast on RTÉ 1 TV at 11am and will be available afterwards on the RTE Player.