16.03.2017
Blessing of the Shamrock St Patrick’s Celebration in DIT Grangegorman
A special ‘Blessing of the Shamrock’ service took place in St Laurence’s on the Grangegorman Campus of Dublin Institute of Technology on Wednesday (March 14). The service was led by the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Diarmuid Martin who delivered the Homily and the Archdeacon of Dublin, the Ven David Pierpoint, who blessed the shamrock.
The service was attended by students and staff of DIT as well as nurses who worked in the former St Brendan’s Hospital which occupied the site previously.
In his homily, Archbishop Martin noted that the world was becoming a less secure place and that root of that fragility lay in the challenge between good and evil. “Conversion is a call to change direction in our lives and recognise that we are not trapped in our current route,” he said.
Speaking of the importance of prayer to St Patrick, the Archbishop said that if we recognised the centrality of prayer to our faith and the importance of God in our prayer there could be no justification for evil and exclusion.
Two students of DIT, Michael Adesi and Siobhán Doyle, read from a reflection from a legend of St Patrick Questions of Ethne Alba from the seventh century.
The shamrock was blessed by Archdeacon Pierpoint before being handed out to the congregation.
During the service Archdeacon Pierpoint led prayers for the crew of the Coastguard Helicopter Rescue 116, their families and all involved in the recovery efforts off the coast of Mayo.