We are now in Passiontide. This is the most intensive time in our cycle of Liturgical worship and there is nowhere better to observe Passiontide than St Margaret’s. St Margaret’s was built as the perfect liturgical stage to celebrate Holy Week, and Maundy Thursday, in particular, is our special observance. Please make a determined effort to turn up and be there on Maundy Thursday and also, if you can, for the watch as well.
I am adding a wee change to the Liturgy to heighten the sense of drama at the Mass of the Last Supper and I shall preach at that service on why I am doing this. Whilst I was in Qatar recently I had been doing a lot of thinking about what we do in the Gallowgate and how we can improve things.
The observance of the Islamic religion in Qatar obviously is fairly high on the agenda of most of the population. You come back here and what do you see?…almost total indifference to the Christian Faith. A Faith which made this country what it is. The state of the Church here is lamentable. However, the outside Calvary at St Margarets is a statement, and it is a statement of what we believe and it is up to us to be confident to express that. Our contemporary world and society is a mess, to put it bluntly.
On Mothering Sunday, Lent IV, I mentioned in the pulpit, about all the media commentary going on at the moment about boys and young men. How they are living aimless lives, getting caught up with the wrong things, surfing the internet and imbibing and being influenced by shocking material online. The following Monday morning Gareth Southgate was on BBC News talking about this very thing. He expressed how important it is for boys and young men to have a male role-model to emulate. The reporter then took us to a gym where a boy was learning to wrestle. His instructor was obviously dedicated to his sport and the youngsters in his charge. On the instructor’s tee-shirt was emblazoned the motto… “Pray, Eat, Wrestle, Repeat”.
I noticed that the reporter made no mention of “pray” which is typical of the contemporary media. What a pity! To me, the most important and convincing role model for boys and young men is Our Lord Jesus Christ. St Ignatius of Loyola was quite aware of that when he founded The Order of the Jesuits in 1534, an order that has withstood the test of time and has been an army of dedicated men living, sharing life and communicating the Gospel over five centuries in every continent.
It was said that when Fr John Comper came to the Gallowgate he went up and down the street behind a crucifer and two acolytes and came back to St Margaret’s with a gathered congregation from the pends and closes of the tenements. I just wish that I could meet and engage with the boys who are hellbent on despoiling all the granite in the Seamount Lane and defacing the wooden boundary fencing in the Greyfriars Carpark. The whole place is looking distasteful to say the least. Whoever is doing this would be better learning to serve at Mass than spraying the North Wall of the Church with graffiti!As I write there is scaffolding erected over the Holy Name Chapel for the purposes of repairs to the walls and roof of the Church. This is essential work which I hope will guarantee that the building is wind and water-tight for many years to come. We may have to cash-in some more investments, which I am reluctant to do, but, to me, there is no point in kicking the can down the road. Building costs will continue to spiral.
However, repairs cost money and it is essential that we support and encourage others to support the Gallowgate Festival, which this year is on Saturday 2nd of August. In tandem with this we are trying to rebuild community which was badly wounded by the Covid epidemic. We are intending to run a coach to the Lonach Gathering on the 23rd of August. These Highland games to me are the best anywhere and it is a great day out. Please get these events into your diary. It is all about re-building community.
To return to the point about our tradition at St Margaret’s. We are rightly proud of this place and the tradition that continues from the influence of the Comper family… Fr John Comper, our first Rector and Founder, his son Fr Laurence Comper Curate at St Margaret’s, his daughter Mary Ellen who took religious vows and entered the Convent and Sir Ninian Comper who became a renowned Church architect in the Arts and Crafts Movement. The whole Scottish Church owes a tremendous debt to Fr John Comper not only for his compassion for the less fortunate in society and his work in building community, but most importantly for his contribution in guaranteeing the survival of the Scottish Liturgical tradition in an Anglicising Episcopal Church in Victorian Scotland.
Fr John Comper was very much on his own and we are indebted to him for standing up for the native Scottish Rite at Synods and also taking on the Bishop of Aberdeen at the time. He very much stood in the tradition of the 17th Century Aberdeen Doctors at King’s College and the Jacobite scholars of the 18th Century. In the spirit of that tradition the priest in the Eucharistic Canon calls down the Holy Spirit, the witness of the passion of our Lord, to bless the Bread and the Wine, that they may become the Body and Blood of Christ and to declare the Real Presence of Christ amongst us. In the Liturgy, Christ is by the Spirit, truly present amongst us. Is that not just the most compelling reason for demanding our presence at Mass too?
See you in Church,
As Aye,
Fr. Emsley
