The Parish of Saint Catherine & Saint James with Saint Audoen
Canon Mark Gardner (Editor) Tel: 01 454 2274 Mobile 087 266 0228
Email: markgardner@eircom.net
Review Distribution: Margery Bell Tel: 01 4542067
Website: cja.dublin.anglican.org
Organist: Derek Moylan

Service times every Sunday
10.00 Eucharist, St Audoen, Cornmarket. (Parking in Francis Street is free on Sundays)
11.30 Eucharist (and Sunday School, in term time) St Catherine & St James, Donore Avenue.
(Family Service and Church Coffee, usually Second Sundays)

While works continue in St Audoen’s Park the only access to the Church will be through the OPW Visitor Centre gate on the High Street.

Diary Date, St Audoen’s Cornmarket
7 January 16.00 Epiphany Carol Service sung by the AIB Choral Society, under the direction of Ernest Dines

In memoriam
A memorial service to celebrate the life of the late Brooke Dowse will be held at 12.00 noon on Friday 2 February at St Audoen’s Church Cornmarket. The service will follow the same format as the similar service for his brother Peter a few years ago. Archdeacon Scott Harte who was Brooke’s Rector in Dunfanaghy will take part. The service will be conducted by Canon Mark Gardner, the Rector of St. Audoen’s who also looked after Peter Dowse’s memorial service We will use the same songs of praise as at the funeral service at Raymunterdoney in Donegal. The family have asked me to provide a eulogy to my great pal Brooke. A contingent will travel from Sedbergh School in Cumbria where Brooke taught prior to retirement.
David Gibson
Canon Dowse was chaplain to the High School Dublin when I first saw him, when the School was in Harcourt Street, about 1969. He was a large athletic figure mounted on a bicycle, wrapped in a dark coat and a black beret, stern in demeanour, as it seemed to the boys. Yet he and Marjorie were most hospitable to me in later years in the Garden Flat, a gloomy apartment buried under St Patrick’s Cathedral Deanery. They are remembered with great affection by those who remember their time at St Peter’s Aungier Street or St Audoen’s Cornmarket, after the congregation had moved there, the place where a memorial was erected, recalling their many years together, and a long and faithful ministry, not all of it in easy circumstances.
Mark Gardner
Slí Nua – a New Way
Parish and Diocesan Readers are called to serve the Church and to work with clergy and other ministers. They lead public worship, assist at the Eucharist and share in pastoral and evangelistic work. Diocesan Readers are licensed to preach and teach the word of God. From the blog of Tom Healy, recently commissioned at Christ Church Cathedral:

‘If you pass by some older churches on the outside at night you may notice that they are sometimes lit up from inside. The light shines out through stained glassed windows. However, it is hard to tell from the outside what these figures in the windows mean. Houses and buildings lit up in this way at night time have an attraction. We are more inclined than not to pass by the places that are in darkness. Nobody is in. Light signals warmth, life, company and protection. There is a chance that someone might stop and might even visit the church. On the other hand, darkness is isolating and possibly even threatening. So it is with people.

It is said, and I think it to be true, that 80% of communication is facial, 17% tone of voice and 3% words. By our attitude and genuine – really genuine – concern for others we help others to recognise in us the truth and the light and the life and the joy that Jesus has sown within us. If we think that we lack these – wait for it, pray for it, be open to it and carry on believing and acting anyway as if these goods were within us already in abundance. In His peace we have resolve and clarity to go forward.

At this time of year, some are given to citing a famous but little known poem, God Knows, which was used by King George VI during his Christmas Message 1939, at a defining moment in world history. The poem was composed by Minnie Louise Haskins (1876–1957) and contains the following:

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” And he replied: “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.” So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.’
Tom Healy
St James’ James Street
The old Church of Ireland Church has undergone a remarkable restoration process. Having being out of use for over half a century, the Church was acquired by Dr Pearse Lyons and transformed as the Pearse Lyons Distillery, opened in 2017. The restored church has several remarkable features designed by Mrs Deirdre Lyons, particularly a replacement glass spire, which is lit at night, and a stained glass window illustrating the pilgrimage to St James’s shrine at Compostela. The project included the restoration of the Churchyard, including a memorial to John Lucas VC, and members of his family. (Patrick Hugh Lynch appears to have been the first to appreciate the significance of the memorial.)

It is estimated that 16.5% of all recipients of the Victoria Cross were Irishmen, demonstrating just how many served in the Crown forces. After leaving military service Lucas was caretaker of the main gate lodge of the Phoenix Park, Parkgate Street, until his death in 1892.

St James’s Churchyard is a place of shared history, with Protestants and Catholics, soldiers and rebels, rich and poor all finding their last resting-place there.
Sean J Murphy
Michael Healy
Joseph Voda’s recent photographs of stained-glass windows by Michael Healy in SS Catherine & James are reproduced here.