15.10.2024
‘Keeping faith flickering on the street in Leixlip’ – St Mary’s Church Rededicated
The historic church of St Mary’s in Leixlip was the setting for a double thanksgiving on Sunday October 13. Parishioners joined with Archbishop Michael Jackson for the service of Harvest Thanksgiving and the rededication of the church following the completion of a number of projects which will preserve the ancient building for future generations.
Over a number of years parishioners, led by their Rector the Revd Scott Peoples, have brought to fruition a memorial garden, renewed lighting and electrical wiring in the church, refurbished the windows, and restored the roof along with ancillary services and the internal decoration of the church. This work was all honoured during the service of Harvest Thanksgiving.
The sermon was preached by the Archbishop who considered the various harvests that were being celebrated. He said that the Gospel reading [Matthew 6: 25] began with the advice not to worry about everyday life but urged readers to look to nature for inspiration.
The second reading from the first letter of Paul to Timothy [2:1] drew readers into the relationship between faith and truth which, the Archbishop observed was another harvest – the harvest of who we are and what we do and what brings us to church week after week.
The Old Testament reading [Joel 2: 21] looked at what dug deep into the harvest in the form of the activity of the locust. “The locust in Joel has an energy that does away with what might have been your harvest – the swarming locusts, the hopping locusts, the stripping locusts, and the cutting locusts. But Joel says that the time of the locusts is over and now is the time of the Lord. This connects with the Gospel,” he said.
Archbishop Jackson said that “fruit” and “truth” had allowed the people of the Leixlip Union to make the contribution to their church. “Thank you for all the specific work you have done in this church over many years and with precision and capacity. Much of the work is unseen and unseeable but it secures the vitality of the fabric of this church. All of the work carried out draws in something of the ancient and the modern of this church and the history of this place in the life of the village of Leixlip and the Dioceses of Glendalough and of Dublin,” he stated. “Work like this is never done in a vacuum. It is done out of love for your community and this work keeps this church, which is in the heart of the village, on the map of Leixlip. The work you have done keeps the faith flickering on the streets of Leixlip.”
St Mary’s Leixlip is believed to have been built by the Normans sometime after 1179.
