Irish Times Notes
Church of Ireland notes from the Irish Times
Holy Week
Next week is Holy Week when the Christian church emerges from the privations of Lent, celebrates the entry of Christ into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, relives the sequence of events leading to the crucifixion on Good Friday and prepares for the joyful victory of Easter. In differing ways and with differing emphases that broad spectrum of belief and practice, which is the Church of Ireland, will mark these events.
Tomorrow morning (Sunday) RTE will broadcast a Service of the Word with a reading of the Passion from St Patrick’s Church, Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow, where the rector is Canon Ricky Rountree, while on BBC Radio Ulster there will be a Sequence of Words and Music for Passiontide with the Chaplain of Trinity College, Dublin, Dr Alan McCormack. In Dublin the Palm Sunday Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, will begin (weather permitting) outside in the cathedral precincts where palm crosses will be blessed and distributed while at Evensong in St Patrick’s Cathedral there will be a Sequence of Music and Readings for Passiontide. A new work by Philip Stopford, “Hosanna to the Son of David”, will be performed at the Palm Sunday Eucharist in St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, by the Cathedral Choir who will be joined at Evensong by the Ecclesium Quartet from London. In the Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin, there will be a specially devised processional liturgy featuring a series of banners which have been created by the internationally acclaimed Brazilian photographer, Elis Taves. The BBC “Songs of Praise” programme for St Patrick’s Tide, which was postponed, will be shown tomorrow (Sunday) evening while Stainer’s ever popular oratorio “The Crucifixion” will be performed in Zion Church, Rathgar, at 8.00 pm.
During Holy Week the Bishop of Tuam will give a series of addresses in the Lecale Rural Deanery, in the Diocese of Down, while in St Paul’s Church, Glenageary, the former Archdeacon of Killaloe, the Ven Donald Keegan, will be the Holy Week speaker. Two former Archbishops of Dublin, Dr Walton Empey and Dr Donald Caird, will give Holy Week addresses in Taney and Whitechurch, respectively, while the former Bishop of Derry, Dr James Mehaffey, will be in Rathfarnham. In St John’s Church, Newcastle, Co. Down, the Holy Week services will be conducted by the former Bishop of Connor, Dr Samuel Poyntz, who will preach on the theme “Faces of God”.
On Tuesday evening in the Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin, a series of puppet ballets on the theme of Passiontide will be performed in conjunction with the PUCA puppet theatre. More traditionally, on Maundy Thursday, the Archbishop of Dublin will preside at the Chrism Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral where the oil of healing will be blessed and the diocesan clergy will renew their ordination vows. On Good Friday the preacher at Matins and at the Evening Service in St Patrick’s Cathedral will be the Bishop of Newcastle, the Rt Revd J.M. Wharton.
Today (Saturday) the All Ireland Council of the Mothers’ Union will meet in Castleknock Parish Centre. There will be a lunchtime concert in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, by the Edinburgh University Renaissance Singers who will also sing Evensong. At 8.00 pm in St Patrick’s Church, Greystones, there will be a concert by the Dublin Chamber Choir, directed by Peter Barley, Organist of St Patrick’s Cathedral, while in the Chapel of Trinity College, David Leigh, Assistant Organist in St Patrick’s, will direct a new eight voice ensemble, Res Nova, in a recital of rarely performed Tudor choral works by Browne, Cornysh and Tallis.