CHURCH OF IRELAND NOTES
For Saturday 30th March 2002
From: The RCB Library
Email: RCB Library
Easter Celebrations
Easter is the greatest and oldest feast in the
Christian calendar and its importance is emphasized by the long period
of preparation through Lent and Passiontide. In the pre-Reformation
Church it was the feast when most people received the eucharist and the
counting of Easter communicants has long been a measure of the state of
the Church. It is now, like Christmas, one of the few Christian
festivals which resonates in post Christian society and so, this
weekend, there will be larger than usual congregations in cathedrals and
churches throughout the country as men and women respond to that
primordial desire to make their peace with God.
Tonight in Christ Church Cathedral, beginning at 9.00
pm, there will be an Easter Vigil followed by the First Eucharist of the
Resurrection which will be celebrated by the Archbishop of Dublin Dr
Walton Empey. The Armagh Diocesan Youth Council will host an Easter Dawn
Service at The Argory while in Dublin there will be an ecumenical
Sonrise Celebration at the obelisk on Killiney Hill beginning at 7.02 am.
Tomorrow, by tradition, the bishops will preach in
their diocesan cathedrals while in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin,
Easter Day is one of the preachments allotted to the Dean, Dr Robert
MacCarthy. In the parish of St John, Malone, Belfast, presently vacant
by the preferment of its rector, the Rt Revd Alan Harper, to the
bishopric of Connor, the Easter Sunday preacher will be a former Bishop
of Connor, Dr Samuel Poyntz. In St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, there
will be Festal Evensong with procession and Easter music from Handel's Messiah.
On Tuesday the Choir of St Bartholomew's Church,
Dublin, will leave for Exeter where they will sing the services for
Easter Week and Low Sunday in St Peter's Cathedral. Evensong will be
sung each day and on Low Sunday there will be Choral Matins, Sung
Eucharist and Choral Evensong. This will be the choir's second visit to
Exeter and they have also sung in the cathedrals of Ripon, Hereford,
Lichfield, Gloucester, Worcester and St David's. Under the directorship
of Malcolm Wisener, the choir of twenty-eight boys and twenty men is the
largest parish choir in the Church of Ireland and the only parish choir
in the Republic to maintain the traditional format of men's and boys'
voices.
Christ Church Cathedral is seeking to contact all past choristers.
The Cathedral is preparing a database of past choristers, including
lay vicars and stipendiaries, of the Cathedral Choir and the Girls'
Choir. Names and addresses may be sent to the Music Secretary,
Christ Church Cathedral, Christ Church Place, Dublin 8, telephoned
to 01-6712426.
On Tuesday Trinity term begins in the Church of
Ireland Theological College where there are presently thirty-one
ordinands of whom twenty-two are men and nine are women. Of these, ten,
six men and four women, are scheduled to be ordained later this year. In
addition there are twenty-three ordinands in training for the auxiliary
ministry and ten of these are due to be ordained this year. The
auxiliary candidates live and study at home but have residential
weekends in the Theological College, the last of which, for this
academic year, will begin on 26 April.
On Wednesday evening at 7.30 pm the Mold and District
Choral Society from North Wales will give a concert in St Multose's
Church, Kinsale, where the rector is Canon David Williams. The concert
is in aid of the restoration funds of St Multose's Church, the Church of
St John the Baptist and Kinsale Methodist Church.
Church of Ireland Notes appear in the Irish
Times whose web site may be found at
http://www.ireland.com/ |
