Pew Sheet – 16th March 2025

The Rector writes ‘One of my favourite tasks during the week is preparing this Pewsheet.

I get to choose wonderful art and to pick out poems that touch me. I do have my favourites I know and one of my favourite poets at the minute is a man called ‘Ayodeji Malcolm Guite’ who is an English poet, singer-songwriter, Anglican priest, and academic. I first came across him at an online Preachers Event during the dark days of the Pandemic. I have now several of his books and I also subscribe to his blog for his new poems.

On the eve of our Patron Saint’s Day, I have included in this week’s Pewsheet Malcolm’s sonnet called ’Patrick’ . In these dark days of international turmoil, what a wonderful role model we have in Saint Patrick, who somehow managed to rise above the need to punish enemies in the traditional way.

We can only pray that this forgiving spirit somehow permeates the political climate in the unsettled world.’

While Patrick is of course primarily associated with Ireland where he flourished as a missionary in the second half of the fifth century, he was not Irish to begin with. He seems to have been a shepherd on the mainland of Great Britain and was in fact captured there, at the age of sixteen, by raiding pirates and taken across the sea to Ireland where he was sold as a slave. He was six years in captivity before he finally made his escape and returned to Britain.

And this is where the story takes a truly extraordinary turn. While he was enslaved in Ireland, working as a shepherd for his masters, Patrick became a Christian and when, having made good his escape, he returned home he had a vision in which a man gave him a letter headed ‘The Voice of Ireland’, a letter urging him to go back to the very place from which he had escaped and bring the Gospel to his former captors! That Patrick obeyed such a vision seems to me a greater miracle than any of the others subsequently attributed to him, and it is on this return that my sonnet turns.

That capacity to return, face and forgive former oppressors or enemies seems a particularly vital gift for Ireland’s patron to bestow. As well as alluding briefly to ‘St. Patrick’s Breastplate’, my sonnet also touches on the story that wherever Patrick planted his staff to pray, it blossomed.

Patrick

Six years a slave, and then you slipped the yoke,

Till Christ recalled you, through your captors cries!

Patrick, you had the courage to turn back,

With open love to your old enemies,

Serving them now in Christ, not in their chains,

Bringing the freedom He gave you to share.

You heard the voice of Ireland, in your veins

Her passion and compassion burned like fire.

Now you rejoice amidst the three-in-one,

Refreshed in love and blessing all you knew,

Look back on us and bless us, Ireland’s son,

And plant the staff of prayer in all we do:

A gospel seed that flowers in belief,

A greening glory, coming into leaf.

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/

Dates for your Diary

March

19th MU Meeting 3pm Parish Hall

Lenten Workshop on Prayer, 8pm St Mary’s Church

23rd MU Lenten Lunch in Parish Hall after 11am Service ,

Donations to the MU Overseas Fund.

26th Lenten Workshop on Prayer, 8pm St Mary’s Church

April

13th Palm Sunday:

9:30am Morning Prayer in St John’s. Palm & Passion Liturgies

11am Morning Prayer in St Mary’s including Palm Procession, with Palm Liturgy in the Rectory Grounds before returning for Passion Liturgy in the church.

14th – 16th Monday – Wednesday of Holy Week:

10.30am Holy Communion in St Mary’s

17th Maundy Thursday:

12 noon Diocesan Chrism Eucharist in St Factna’s Cathedral, Rosscarbery.

7:30pm Maundy Thursday Eucharist in St Mary’s,including washing of feet

9pm until Dawn ‘Night/Gethsemane Watch’ , in St Mary’s Church, praying for the Environment ahead of Earth Day on 22nd April.

18th Good Friday:

10.30am St John’s – Morning Prayer with Litany

12 noon Stations of the Cross in St Mary’s Graveyard with our sister church of Our Lady & St John

7.30pm St Mary’s – Service of Tennebrae

19th Saturday of Holy Week:

9pm St Mary’s – Easter Vigil Service, Pascal candle lit from outside byre.

20th Easter Day:

9.30am St John’s – Easter Eucharist

11am St Mary’s – Easter Eucharist

May

1st Annual Vestry Meeting ‘Easter Vestry’ at 7:30pm in the Parish Hall

The Owenabue Garden and Flower Club, Carrigaline

welcomes Angela E. Heffron, AOIFA teacher,

who will give a teaching demonstration

for beginner flower arrangers.

Includes: Spring Show, Raffle and Refreshments.

Venue: St. Mary’s NS, Waterpark, Carrigaline, Co. Cork.

Date: Monday 24th March 2025 at 8pm.

All are welcome. Visitors €10.

Music Notes 16-03-2025

Hymns at St Mary’s

323 The God of Abraham praise

468 How shall I sing that majesty

87 Christ is the world’s true light

322 I bind unto myself today

Our first hymn today was written by Thomas Olivers (1725-1799) and is set to the Jewish tune Yigdal which was popularised by Meir ben Judah a cantor at the Great Synagogue in London during the eighteenth century. Ben Judah was better known by his stage name Michael Leoni as he was also a popular opera singer at the time, appearing with permission of the synagogue elders with the exception of Fridays – the Jewish sabbath.

The Yigdal is a Jewish hymn based on the 13 principles of faith formulated by Maimonides, a twelfth-century Sephardic rabbi and philosopher. It is often sung at the opening of the morning and the close of the evening service. Leoni’s reputation as a cantor and singer of the Yigdal was so admired that members of non-conformist Christian denominations would attend the synagogue to hear him. Thomas Olivers was one of those.

Olivers was the son of a Welsh shoemaker who converted to Methodism and became a close associate of John Wesley, becoming a strong advocate of Wesley through preaching and pamphlet writing. He is buried in John Wesley’s tomb at City Road Chapel in London. His hymn ‘The God of Abraham praise’ was written in response to Leoni’s singing of the Yigdal.

Leoni tried out a new career as an opera promoter in 1783, visiting Dublin to sing and promote an opera production in collaboration with the composer Giordani. Unfortunately the venture was a failure and and Leoni eventually took up a post as cantor to the Jewish community in Jamaica in 1788. He died in Jamaica and is buried at the old Jewish cemetery in Kingston.

Bébhinn 087 228 5965

bebhinnmuire@gmail.com

Random Notes CDLXXXV

Illustrated herewith are photographs of two otherwise quite

unconnected objects, each nevertheless relating to the famous steam ship ‘Great Britain’, built from 1839 to designs of lsmabard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859), for the Great Western Steamship Company’s Bristol to New York transatlantic service, launched at Bristol with much fanfare on Wednesday, 19th July, 1843, being then the largest passenger ship in the world.
The ‘Great Britain’ having endured many vicissitudes over the

following forty odd years was retired from service in 1881, and three years later, dispatched to the Falkland Islands to be used used progressively as a warehouse, quarantine ship and finally as a coal hulk, until in 1937 the ship was scuttled at Sparrow Cove, near Port Stanley, some ninety-eight years after having been first laid down. In 1970 following much consultation, discussion, expense, and a colossal amount of effort, the by then badly decayed and rusting hulk of the great ship was removed from where it had lain for so long, placed on a large pontoon, and towed across the Atlantic to Bristol, and placed within the very same dock in which the ship had been constructed between 1839 to 1843. Remaining in the Great Western dock to this day, the ship has been substantially re-built, later opened to the public, and by now has become both a much

visited tourist destination, and venue for events,

The two objects disparate here illustrated are, a substantial pitch pine door wedge, some eight inches in length, most probably dating from the 1940’s, and bearing a small brass plate engraved with the words ‘Timber from S.S. “Great Britain”,

and a block of four of the1952 Falkland Islands one pound definitive stamps, depicting the ‘Hulk of the “Great Britain”, cancelled at Port Stanley.