03.09.2018
Looking to a Future of Prayer, Hope and Imagination at 150th Anniversary of Holmpatrick Church
Parishioners and friends of Holmpatrick Church in Skerries gathered yesterday evening (Sunday September 2) to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the current church building. The church and its grounds were festooned with fantastic floral displays as the church hosted a flower festival throughout the weekend as part of the celebrations.
The service was celebrated by the Rector, the Revd Anthony Kelly. Archbishop Michael Jackson preached and former clergy, Canon Cecil Mills and the Revd Alan Rufli were in attendance. Worshipers were joined by Fr James Daly and a number of parishioners from St Patrick’s Parish, Skerries.
Archbishop Michael Jackson began his sermon with some words of congratulation to the parish for sustaining witness and worship in the church over the past 150 years and for mounting a magnificent and challenging flower festival.
Holmpatrick Parish Church was consecrated on September 2 1868 by Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench just ahead of the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. Archbishop Trench and his generation had the task of building up the Church of Ireland after Disestablishment, Archbishop Jackson said adding that in our time, we have a similar task. “We belong to and face into a differently troubled Ireland in which we as church people are becoming all too instinctively sorry for ourselves because of diminishing numbers. Discipleship was never about big numbers; discipleship is about faith and action,” he stated.
The Archbishop suggested that Disestablishment was “significantly unattractive” to the vast majority of Church of Ireland people but was a valiant attempt to pacify Ireland, in the words of William Gladstone. Almost 150 years later that theme continued as, with increasing pessimism, we consider the consequences of a ‘no deal’ Brexit.
“Movement of people, movement of goods and services, the sharing of culture and capacity will all come under intense threat as 2018 gives way to 2019. The change ahead of us is as seismic as any we have known in our time. The loss of our nearest neighbours to North and to East as fellow–members of The European Union is something of which nobody, I imagine, had thought when the Good Friday–Belfast Agreement was signed – just up the M1 from here, as a further attempt in Mr Gladstone’s words: to pacify Ireland. It was an Agreement which presupposed and which was deeply dependent on shared European belonging between Ireland and the UK to the benefit of peace and stability in Northern Ireland in particular after decades of living Troubles,” he said.
Archbishop Jackson said that the church’s anniversary was an invitation to celebrate 150 years of continuity and change. He suggested that there were a number of things that could be learned from the anniversary. He said the future must be a future of prayer, a future of community and a future of imagination. “How else are we to run with the invitation embedded in what those of the era of Disestablishment actually said: ‘Now we are free to shape our own future’?” he asked.
Holmpatrick Church will hold two open days on Saturday and Sunday, October 6 and 7, to which all will be welcome.
You can read the full text of Archbishop Jackson’s sermon here.
