The Parish of Saint Catherine & Saint James with Saint Audoen
Canon Mark Gardner Tel: 01 454 2274 Mobile 087 266 0228
Email: markgardner@eircom.net
Diocesan Lay Reader: James Kilbey
Review Distribution: Margery Bell Tel: 01 4542067
Website: cja.dublin.anglican.org
Organist: Harry Meehan
Service times every Sunday
10.00 Eucharist, St Audoen, Cornmarket (Parking in Francis Street is free on Sundays).
11.30 Eucharist, St Catherine & St James, Donore Avenue.
Sunday 10 November Family Service, with an act of remembrance, followed by tea and coffee.
Sunday 15 December Carol Service, and mince pies.
Holy Baptism
At the Church of St Catherine & St James, on Sunday 13 November, Alexander David Benson, son of Ralph Benson and Margaret Matthews of Clarence Mangan Road, Dublin 8. His Godparents are Victoria Smyth and Matthew Levell. ‘of such is the Kingdom of heaven.’
Thanksgiving for the blessings of harvest
We gave thanks to the Creator for the fruits of harvest at Family Service, combined with Holy Baptism, on Sunday 13 October. Many thanks to those who decorated the Church and provided tea, coffee and nice things to eat afterwards. St Teresa’s Donore Avenue was represented by Sam Byrne, Pastoral Assistant, who read the familiar reading from Joel in a modern translation: ‘fields, don’t be afraid, but be joyful and glad’. It shows what changes there have been at ground level, that she is practically a curate.
The evening before the Rector was invited to Family Mass at St Teresa’s with a children’s choir and the theme of Harvest, with a touch of Halloween in the decorations! Fr David Corrigan celebrated, and was most inclusive of his Anglican neighbour in the liturgy, reading the Gospel and assisting in the administration at his kind invitation. We wish him well as he recovers from surgery to implant a pacemaker. Really, he should have been resting.
St Audoen’s Cornmarket
The final stage of the exterior works is under way, and the scaffolding is up again, on the two remaining sides of the tower in need of repointing and the replacement of some of the stone. The hard cement pointing used years ago proved to be unsuitable, as the stone failed before the pointing, which was then left hanging like a cobweb of cement until it fell off. We were delighted to be recently informed by Rosie Smallwood of Kevin Blackwood and Associates, Architects, that the grant aid we have received has been increased to an overall figure of €50.000, almost a quarter of the total cost. The fabric, including the exposed upper surfaces of the gable ends, should soon be more watertight than it has been for many years.
The staff of the Office of Public Works Visitor Centre are a group of very well informed people, as well as being most courteous and helpful in their support of the worshipping congregation. Neil Moxon has been doing detailed research into the monuments in the Church and the ruins. He has deciphered an inscription, which was previously unknown and unattested, in the Portlester Chapel. Washing with water revealed a marble plaque on a table tomb, inscribed ‘Here lies the Body of Lieutenant Roger Coughlan 83rd Regiment, who died 28th of March 1834 aged 24 years.’ It was, as reported in the newspapers, a ‘Melancholy Suicide’; and the verdict of the Coroner’s Jury was ‘Temporary Insanity’.
Hymn 36
At the end of St Catherine & St James’ Thanksgiving for the blessings of harvest we sang the following hymn to the tune Tyrol. Written by Catherine MacSorley of St Peter’s Church Aungier Street, where she told the father of Irene Hayes of St Audoen’s Church, that in verse three she had in mind the window boxes of the old houses in York St, between St Peter’s and St Stephen’s Green. I first heard this hymn at St Audoen’s Harvest in the late 1970’s when Canon John Brown preached, quoting ‘we thank thee for the flowers’. We had gone there to chime the old bells!
We thank you, God our Father,
for all your loving care;
we thank you that you made
the world so very bright and fair.
We thank you for the sunshine,
and for the pleasant showers;
and we thank you, God our Father,
we thank you for the flowers.
Out in the sunny meadows
and in the woodlands cool,
and under every hedgerow
and by each reedy pool,
and on the lonely moorland,
and by the broad highway;
with colours bright, so pure and fresh,
they spring up every day.
And in the dusty city,
where busy crowds pass by,
and where the tall dark houses
stand up and hide the sky;
and where through lanes and alleys
no pleasant breezes blow,
dear God our Father, even there
you make the flowers grow.
