For hundreds of years Christ Church Cathedral served as the Chapel Royal of Dublin Castle – until the building of this church in 1815. Charles I had designated the cathedral ‘our chapel royal’ and there maintained Anglican rites and ceremonies. His successor, James II, continued to recognise it as ‘our chapell royal’ and in the period 1688-1689 maintained there the rites and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church: the crypt indeed still preserves the eucharistic tabernacle of that Jacobean period. In those days it would have seemed an impossibility to have differing rites and ceremonies existing side by side. So how wonderful this morning, in this building and in what is felicitously and officially again being referred to as the chapel royal, to be able as Catholics and Anglicans and Presbyterians and Methodists to celebrate a common liturgy of the Word for the centenary of the St John Ambulance Brigade of Ireland. Mind you, as Brigade members you’ll still be welcome in the future as in the past in both cathedral and Franciscan church for your non-centennial services.

Centennial services seem to be happening with some regularity for the St John organisation in recent years. 1999 marked the millennium anniversary of the founding of the Order of St John through which the descent of the Brigade is traced. The year 999 had been noted for its millennarian traumas, just as 1999 was for us with all its Y2K fears for the computer breakdown of society.

Yet the Order survived 999 to serve the poor of Jerusalem for nearly 100 years before the fall of the city to the Islamic conquest of Palestine and the move to Rhodes. By 1522 even Rhodes had to be evacuated for a move to Malta. The move to Malta, at the height of the battles of the reformation, also saw the Order first split along religious lines. The present day Order of Malta maintains the Roman Catholic succession, but there are four other recognised Orders of St John: in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and in the United Kingdom.

The English branch acquired all the British and Irish property of the Grand Priory at the reformation. Apart, however, from appointing titular priors, the Order was virtually inactive until the 1820s. At that time, with a mainly Anglican bias, it was re-established as an order of chivalry for both Britain and Ireland with the sovereign at its head. And it is to that Order, as to any Order of chivalry of another country, that, with government consent, we are happy today to acknowledge two Irish citizens, Dr Helen Watson and Mr Clement Ryan as Dame and Knight respectively.

The first Ambulance Brigade was formed in 1888 and the first Irish Brigade, the centenary of which we celebrate today, in 1903. At Independence in 1922 all branches of the Brigade became independent of the British Order and we in what was then called the Free State were established as what we are still known today – the St John Ambulance Brigade of Ireland. We recognise your familiar uniforms; we recognise your ambulances. Like the Samaritan in the gospel story we know you as good neighbours – the people next door to us all – especially at great ceremonial and sporting occasions.

Those who wear the eight-pointed star on their uniforms are attempting to maintain a high standard of outreach to others. The eight points on the cross commit the wearer to humility, compassion, courtesy, devotion, mercy, purity, peace and endurance. The four ends of the cross indicate prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. If only we could see more of such ideals in civic and national affairs what a country of justice and equality and equal opportunity we might all live in. If our Churches, too, lived by these standards then how truly it might be said in truth rather than as it often is in cynicism, ‘See how these Christians love one another’. Perhaps in saying that, however, we should never forget the true Samaritan stance set by our Franciscan friends in Merchants’ Quay with their ministry to those caught up in the devastating Dublin drug scene.

In the gospel reading the Samaritan’s help was practical. The help of Brigade members is equally practical. There’s no intrusion into people’s lives, yet there’s a going out to meet people in need; there’s sensitivity and imagination; there’s the making clear of a willingness to help in any emergency.

This year we celebrate a 100-year-old tradition of Brigade work in Ireland. May it continue to flourish. Indeed may it continue to attract many new members, especially among the young people of Ireland. From the young alone can spring your hopes of success for the future.