I have just returned from a short break in Bulgaria and Greece. Little did I know, on the Sunday before I left, that the readings at Mass for the Holy Cross would be particularly poignant. The Epistle was from Philippians 2: 6-11 and that wonderful passage about the nature of Christ which was an early Christian Hymn, Carmen Christi…
“The state of Christ was divine,
Yet he did not cling to his equality with God
But emptied himself
To assume the condition of a slave,
And became as men are;
And being as all men are,
He was humbler yet,
Even to accepting death,
Death on a cross.
But God raised him high
And gave him the name
Which is above all other names
So that all beings
In the heavens, on earth and in the underworld,
Should bend the knee at the name of Jesus
And that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord,
To the glory of God the Father.”
Two days into my stay in the Balkans I found myself in Greece and in Phillipi. I could not believe it; the whole experience was amazing. There was I walking across the very stones in the forum that St Paul may have walked on. I stood by the entrance gate of the prison in which he was incarcerated and was also at a Baptistry, the site of which was where Lydia the first Christian woman in Europe was said to have been. It was quite overwhelming.
Stones matter. From ancient standing stones in Scotland, to Roman milestones, to Pictish Sculptured stones, to churches across the land, because stones have an intimate connection with humanity. The stones of St Margarets mean so much to us. Even more important is the concept of Living Stones which we ourselves are! We are part of the fabric of this place and that is what we are all about. That is what the first Sunday in October and the Feast of the Dedication celebrates. The stones of a building are so important, but even more so are the ‘living stones’.
If you can get to Church on the first Sunday in October then please make the effort. It is important, as we are all “living stones” within this building of granite!
I had occasion in Greece and Bulgaria to visit the most amazing monasteries. I shall never forget them. The art work and iconography was just amazing. Rila in Bulgaria was particularly beautiful. It was a place that was very much the spiritual heart of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. There are very close links between that eremitical monastic style and that of the Celtic Church here in Scotland.
When I returned to Scotland I spent two days in research at the National Archive of Scotland at the Waterloo Place in Edinburgh. A building with a most incredible rotunda designed by Robert Adam after the Pantheon in Rome. My studies were quite intensive and I was looking for a letter from two of the Scottish Bishops sent to Fr Robert Lyon at the beginning of October 1746. Robert Lyon had been the priest of St John’s Congregation in Perth and had signed up to be Chaplain in Lord Ogilvy’s Forfarshire Regiment. He did not carry arms. However when the Jacobite army arrived in Perth he had expressed enthusiasm for Bonnie Prince Charlie by putting the Capital Letters BPC up in his window, much to the annoyance of George Millar, the Town Clerk of Perth, who subsequently had it in for the poor boy.
After Culloden he was captured and eventually was incarcerated in Carlisle Castle Gaol which is a horrible confined dank place. It was there that he frequently celebrated Mass for his fellow prisoners with the 1637 Scottish Liturgy. He was a great supporter of the Scottish Eucharistic tradition. In his last speech from the scaffold at Penrith he stated that the Scottish liturgy was “nigher to the primitive model than any other church this day can boast of.”
No compassion was given him. He was hung, drawn and quartered on the Festival of SS Simon & Jude. Literally hacked to pieces by an unskilled executioner. In many ways he was the personification of the brutality meted out by the Duke of Cumberland and his cohorts towards the vanquished.
On St Margaret’s Day, Sunday 16th of November, there will be a Buffet after Mass and St Andrews Cathedral Choir are coming to sing Choral Evensong and Benediction at 6.30pm.
See you in Church,
As Aye,
Fr. Emsley
